Money laundering professionals at work?

Again, the trail leads to Gibraltar through many mistakes and confusion of whole mailbox batteries.

Did the managers of Wirecard prepare the money laundering of the international narcotic trade and the darknet for different crypto-currencies?

Did Wirecard already launder money for the international drug mafia via the Dubai branch?

Oliver Bellenhaus, who seems to be involved in a whole network of unrelated companies via various British firms (we reported) could provide excellent information on this. After he arrived in the Federal Republic of Germany, he too is in custody on remand. In 2010 and 2015, Wirecard came under investigation by the Munich public prosecutor's office on suspicion of money laundering. Nothing happened of it.

 Now, however, things look different.

The US authorities are currently accusing Ruben W. of having installed fake sites via such a "complex network" of letterbox companies and online payment service providers and of having found a way to sell marijuana illegally in violation of the SAFE BANK Act throughout the United States, as reported by the Wall Street Journal. 

When Ruben W., who lived in Luxembourg, was arrested and people close to Wirecard tried to get the fallen star of the Californian marijuana scene out on bail, numerous institutions listened carefully. Once again, the traces lead to well-known trusts in Gibraltar, as one can hear from the scene.

Various investigators are currently investigating the question in the USA, Singapore and the Philippines.

End of a time travel

Now the Management Board of Wirecard must have decided to file for insolvency proceedings given the threat of insolvency. No journalist can see through Wirecard’s corporate network, which is designed like a bulwark, and no one can say what happened on the Philippines, in Singapore and Dubai’s letterbox batteries. 

Investors are amazed at the rapid decline in the price of the shares, which allegedly arrived at Zero. Billions in assets have been burned. The Bank of America lowered its outlook to $1 per share, which would mean that the stock would soon reach the penny-stock range. However, the stock isn’t worth that much more. EY, as an auditor, assumes that Wirecard was involved in large-scale fraud. The brutal and partly inhuman suppression of investigative journalism towards the Financial Times by the German BaFin speaks volumes about the understanding of subjecting Wirecard to state control. The despicable lucre justified every transaction that was supposed to make investors richer. It did not matter whether Rami El Obeidi, the “secret service chief” of the Libyan National Transitional Council after Gaddafi was involved in strange financial flows. In this context, it became known that Wirecard also started to spy on critics. 

According to information from several agencies, Jan Marsalek, who is now wanted with an arrest warrant, intends to turn himself into the authorities in Munich. Marsalek is also speculating on a deal with the public prosecutor’s office to escape a possibly long period of detention. Meanwhile, Marsalek, who acts as a phantom, is said to be in China. 

Watching with history

Meanwhile, the omissions of recent years are becoming increasingly evident. It is impossible to explain to any of the investors why no action was taken when the connection to Wirecard became apparent in 2017 in the “Paradise Papers”. Even back then, it was all about illegal online casinos, offshore gambling providers and the trail into the darkest corners of the Internet. In 2008, Markus Braun had to vehemently advocate that the balance sheets were in order, as rumours were growing that something was wrong with the Aschheim-based company.

Wirecard was the brutal, unbridled capitalism of the dotcom awakening, which was able to make the most of financial slaves such as Gibraltar and Andorra or Liechtenstein. Wirecard developed into an economic system within the financial apparatus. In the beginning, it was only about the billing of pornography, which was downloadable in 1999, and the beginning of online gaming, which boomed from the end of 2004. In the streets of Gibraltar, the company founders and trustees recommended Wirecard as a solution for any profit maximization. 

It was no secret that falsely registered prepaid credit cards from gas stations were also used for criminal business. Wirecard did not care about this fact. Thus, bundles of cards loaded with 100 euros from the gas station could be used for transactions that made Wirecard rich. 

Those who spoke against this were quickly brought into Wirecard’s reality, into a vacuum without laws. That was tolerated. Or those that the former KPMG manager Markus Braun had made his own. Big questions about where the investment of the foundation of the DAX group came from were wiped away or suppressed. Nobody had anything to want. Over the months and the following years, many journalists realized that money had been provided for the initial business from gloomy sources. 

Since then, twelve long years have passed. Nothing happened, at some point, the scene calmed down. The trail already led to Gibraltar. Braun was able to wipe away the pressure that was weighing on him in 2008 with a memorable interview.

But now it looks different.

However, one wonders how it could have come to the point where the prepaid card broker Wirecard was able to lead Commerzbank and Landesbank Baden-Württemberg (LBBW), the Dutch ABN Amro and the Dutch ING by the nose. In this context, Wirecard today looks like any other pyramid game.

Questions about questions remain

Have funds been laundered via cryptocurrencies from offshore paradises?

Also, Crypto.com, where you could allegedly pay your credit card bill with Bitcoin, as well as TenX, will have big problems. 

We remember that the trail of Julian Hop’s TenX led to the trustee densely populated mailbox paradise at the southern tip of Spain: In early 2018, the company WaveCrest, which managed the VISA license in Gibraltar, collapsed. TenX was without a permit. What ultimately led to a cooperation with Wirecard is not clear.

 It is unusual in this context that the first official measures against Wirecard were taken in Singapore. People did not sleep there.

Here, too, the question remains, was money laundering carried out via BitCoins and the celebrated BitCoin card trick?

Why the people of Aschheim embellished, their balance sheets can only be explained by money laundering. Wirecard was a Trojan horse without reins.

Jan Marsalek is wanted

Marsalek was Braun’s “right hand” and is currently supposed to be in the Philippines. Unfortunately, nobody could be reached at the Wirecard press office. Whether Marsalek is the mastermind behind the countless forged documents can neither be denied nor affirmed.

At least Jan Marsalek or a trace of him is being sought there. Even the Minister of Justice of the Philippines commented on this; apparently, Wirecard has been declared a matter for the boss.

The Philippine Minister of Justice Menardo Guevarra stated that he had commissioned the authorities to investigate. The Southeast Asian state does not have an extradition agreement with the Federal Republic of Germany, which would possibly mean that Jan Marsalek would be exposed to the justice of the Duterte dictatorship. In a country in which human life counts for less than the whims of a dictator, Marsalek would be well advised to return to Germany and provide the authorities with information about the Wirecard Bank’s involvement.

What a coincidence to think that the busy family law expert Mark Tolentino is about to get new bank statements. Marsalek had already entered the country once in March for two days and is now back there. The Philippine authorities are also investigating the bank and are probably looking for the billions in the dictator Duterte’s empire. The Philippine Central Bank stated that the missing funds could not be found in the country’s financial system.

As the Board of Directors of the Philippine banks in Manila told the Manila Times, neither BDO Unibank Inc. (BDO) nor the Bank of the Philippines Islands (BPI) did not find the missing billions, whose name was only used to cover the traces, Governor Diokno said. It remains to be seen whether one can believe that. Another simple question is whether accounts of real customers were falsified to use their names for money laundering. In this context, the air bookings researched by the British “Financial Times”, which Wirecard is said to have carried out to make sales look higher, are said to have given a boost. These bookings were directed through various points. 

Thrillers in Manila and Singapore

Diokno added: “The head of the Central Bank noted that both banks had informed Ernst & Young, Wirecard’s external auditor, that the documents confirming the existence of the alleged funds were ‘false’.

He went on to say, according to the Manila Times:

“The document claiming the existence of a Wirecard account at BDO is a forged document and contains forged signatures of bank employees,” BDO said in a statement released over the weekend. And: “Your external auditor has presented us with a document claiming that they are customers. We have established that the document is false. We are continuing to investigate the matter. “

Meanwhile, the Straights Times in Singapore reports that it learned from an unspecified source, through the Reuters news agency, “that Wirecard is also considering selling or closing parts of its business, but that the creditor banks are not interested in an emergency sale, especially since litigation could deter buyers. Besides, Straights Times business editor Choo Yun Ting explained that the Singaporean public prosecutor’s office announced in March last year that eight Wirecard subsidiaries were under investigation as part of a criminal investigation for alleged counterfeiting, falsified documents, money laundering and the release of funds to support false transactions believed to have taken place between 2014 and 2018. Roundtripping involves the falsification of turnover and profit by sending money to a third party who then uses it to buy goods and services from the sender under the pretext of a genuine trade”.

Again, in connection with gambling and options, a programme of effective money laundering has been developed.

It is urgently necessary that the German BaFin prohibits Wirecard from doing any further business.

Former CFO Braun was arrested on suspicion of falsification of financial statements. On Monday evening he surrendered to the authorities in Munich after he learned that the Public Prosecutor's Office 1 in the Bavarian capital had applied for an arrest warrant against him that morning.  

Now, after the Herstatt Bank, 1974, one of the biggest financial scandals in German post-war history is unfolding.

If it is not the biggest, questions remain as to how it could be that a country like the Philippines could be involved in financial transactions of this magnitude, which maintains death squads and has killed thousands of innocent people as drug dealers and others.

Dictators and the Mafia

Currently, the busy corporate lawyer Mark Tolentino does not appear to be in Makati City. The former minister under the pseudo-ruler Duterte with a penchant for quick and plentiful executions had disappeared without a trace. Duterte had fired him some months ago. Where to go or with whose money, that is not yet clear. Meanwhile, he let it be known that he wanted to get new bank statements. 
Whether the dubious family lawyer is even able to prove the whereabouts of the money is not clear either.

In the streets of Andorra, people had known about the highly functional money-laundering opportunity Wirecard for a long time. In the alleys of Gibraltar, too, they had been aware of the convenient way of circumventing any laws against money laundering for many years.

There was the Banc de Binary, a dubious option company that promised daily increasing profits, and online casinos that gave Wirecard as an insider tip on money laundering. Some customers even claimed that it was only through Wirecard that they became victims of the machinations of Banc de Binary in the first place.

Thus, transactions with high returns, i.e. the purchase of non-existent goods with dirty money, became the hobby horse of many ex-brokers on the grey market. The linchpin -Wirecard. In February 2020, EFRI filed criminal charges against Banc de Binary for money laundering in more than 700 cases in connection with Wirecard. This seemed to be a marginal note these days. From here, traces reach as far as Cyprus.

Whiter than credit cards from a petrol station only Ariel washes

The shareholders of Wirecard Solution Ltd. are caught up in a complicated web of companies, mailbox and offshore solutions, apparently steered by Newcastle Upon Tyne.  How this escaped the German supervisory authority is a complete mystery. And this mystery will be even more challenging to solve than to search and find the missing billions.

Thus, among the directors of the English Wirecard group, another connection to the investment half-world emerges Thomas Michael, Richard Jennings. He owns Yar Ltd Afton Manor, Freshwater, Isle Of Wight, PO40 9TW. Behind this façade is supposed to be a consulting company, which was founded on February 14, 2002. A stately home is revealed under the address, which could have originated from a  heartache literature effusion—the ideal world of financiers and consultants.

It soon became evident through a lawyer specialising in commercial law, Jesse Douglas & Aaskells Solicitors, Room 1 Sigma Business Center, Harrow, Middlesex, HA1 1LJ, whose client had been advised to use a bank account issued by 'Wirecard Card Solutions Ltd' and operated by another company called 'Marq Millions Ltd', that something was rotten with the German start-up. That was 2018.

But who is Marq Millions Ltd.?

Wirecard Ltd.'s operations in Singapore, 2019, were tainted with announcements and the high art of forgery and deception. During the authorities' investigation of the Singapore office of the online payment service provider, the local police had found evidence pointing to "serious counterfeiting and fake accounts". As written, 2019, not last week when the family rights activist with a penchant for dictators was sought on the Philippines. Now Wirecard applied for a license in Singapore to continue the business. 

Mailboxes, offshore companies and money laundering facilities are said to have been the actual core business of the Aschheim-based company. One is astonished that this business was doing well for so long. Card Systems Middle East, based in Dubai, was just one of the strange business partners of the Aschheim start-up friends. In 2019, Bellenhaus still refused to reveal the identity of Al Alam Solutions FZ LLC. in Dubai, which was later closed due to damage to its reputation. The greed of the Wirecard people was unbearable. Years ago, one could already read in several forums that money disappeared without a trace and never reappeared. This issue seemed to be part of Wirecard's business model. 

At the time, the public prosecutor's office in Munich did not see any evidence for investigations.  

Part 2 Frayed Business

More like a lying, lame duck

In front of partly empty seats, Donald Trump put together his tasteless Tulsa show. There, wherein 1921 round 300 people died in racial riots, racist Trump started his ridiculous election campaign. 

Scapegoats must be sought and found

He, the dictator of the USA, had a bad week. John Bolton is allowed to launch The Room Where It Happened on Tuesday. A judge had to rule on the start of the sale. A niece of Trump wants to score with the memories of the terribly nice family. The Trumps.

The Flodders would be really nice.

The despot, who did not say a word in Tulsa about the grievances in the USA, complaints against any publications.

George Floyd seems to be a hallucination of the Democrats. Trump didn't even mention him in his confusing speech. His deputy, Mike Pence, seemed like a ridiculous lackey who praised his boss like a pop star, but unfortunately forgot that the assembled could be infected by COVID-19, who chanted stereotypical sayings of Trump's campaign team with hoarse voices. Surrounded by MAGA singing, which came over like a dance around the golden calf, the US despot then stepped up to the podium.

An old, evil man.

Trump had learned from his former brother in the spirit, of Kim Jong-un, another cheeseburger lover and dictator, to applaud his person as he had done in the Pyongyang Politburo.

With an evil grin and a little stupid, without any real knowledge base, Trump then presented his political fairy tales, his alleged successes.  One of the strange stories was the abolition of the police in the USA by a Biden government.

Kung Flu 

The speech could only disgust a normal person.

Kung Flu was just about on Trump's level when he puzzled the SARS COVID-19 virus. He had still not understood the danger of the disease. He obviously lacked the intelligence to do so. Hurried again against the fake press, which he called the most dishonest people. He seemed to be his own propaganda minister, who had been looking for the victim before the comments about the pathetic speech. In the middle of the speech, Trump praised himself once again, what a handsome guy he was, his voice reminded of past despots.

He lied once again, claiming that he had greeted 600 times military, and at one of the last appearances the corpulent liar seemed weak. In a complete loss of reality, he then promised the best financial year in the history of the USA. Trump called the Boeing President, a son of a bitch. And presented himself as the hero of his own Air Force One on the loo. After that Germany got its fat off, Trump tried once again to extort money from Germany's NATO contribution.  Like an evil clown with the same mug, living and thriving in his own world, he tried to open a debt account that probably only he can understand. Like the soul of a shopkeeper, he opened the bill of the last 30 years and said Angela Merkel would be nice but would pay billions to Russia for the energy supply. 
After further side blows on the democrats followed his GRÖTAZ (Biggest Trump of all times) slogans, in which he pretended to have absolutely unrealistic economic data.

He liked to hear himself speak, the applause was restrained, which followed at the end of the bad Trump performance. How much he, the worst president of the USA since the foundation of the state, slandered his generals, he himself pretended: He claimed that Democrats would punish churchgoers in the future, but not those who set fire to churches.

The conflagration in society was caused by Trump himself. 

Bringing life into the past

Admittedly, Frankenholz is not the navel of the world. Bexbach certainly isn't either. Very few people know these places. 

But in mining, the two places were once world leaders. That was a long time ago. 

What remained are the ruins of the compressor house, the skeleton of a company-owned filling station, supply lines and parts of former shaft superstructures and much other debris. These onces served many masters who, in the course of history, went through the ages to extract the "Saar-Gold" from the depths and are now left to decay. The villas of the then administrators are now already sought-after residential buildings. 

But now Andreas Kroth is planning in cooperation with the Frankenholz-Gewerbecenter (Frankenholz commercial centre), to rebuild the compressor hall of the former Frankenholz mine, around which a road is to be laid. This stake is where the new Frankenholz centre is to be built. Not only for culture but also to stimulate social interaction. 

Along this access road, numerous single-family houses are to be built on the current wasteland. Full of enthusiasm, the civil engineer Andreas Kroth describes his many ideas in the understanding of history and the cultural context. What matters is the integration of the remaining buildings into a new settlement. No efforts are spared to implement the idea. A survey was launched via Facebook to find out what the citizens of Bexbach would like to see. This questioning resulted in numerous suggestions, which Kroth now describes as his plan.

A further waiting would give the ruins, which have been exposed to the weather and decay for years, "the rest", only to be unable even to preserve the gutted façade. The walls show signs of decay and weather-related mould growth. 

Hence, the sensible considerations come at the right time. Urban development plans that combine environmental protection and design and create jobs that are urgently needed in this area of the Saarland. Of course, the planner is aware that it is an investment of millions that has to be made. But it is worth it. 

An extraordinary mirror of Saar history

The compressor house, which was once used to supply oxygen underground, still has its unusual and light-flooded roof construction, which extends almost over its entire length. The walls show much of their former splendour, which has been lying fallow since 1959. With the handover of the Saar by the civil administration of the French occupying power, the operation of the Frankenholz/Saar shafts was finally stopped.

An eventful history accompanied the area around the former Frankenholz mine. Frankenholz was a mirror of Saar's history, and it has always been one of the most important.

Since 1729 the industrial extraction of coal in the Frankenholz pit was attempted. At the beginning of the century, the density of methane gas underground led to the use of an underground gas storage facility to use the gas to heat the mine's boiler plant. It was unique. 

In 1919, following the unification of the Treaty of Versailles, the Republic of France became the owner of all mines in Saar. In 1923, a 100-day strike broke out at the mine, but it affected the entire Saar region. This strike was not only due to the partly inhuman working conditions but also to the political situation. At that time, more than 2800 people were working in the mine. In 1930, the highest output was reached, with over 480,000 tonnes of coal extracted. Thus, the mine became one of the most historically significant industrial sites in the Saarland.  

Frankenholz Mine, 1931, from the "Saarbruecken Miners' Calendar

On January 2, 1941, there was a firedamp explosion in which 41 miners lost their lives. It was a black day for the coal in Saar.  On January 1 there was heavy fire at level 10 of the colliery. As a consequence of the war, there was a disturbance in the Homburg power plant, and the remedial measures had to be omitted on this day. However, as the coal had to be extracted, a devastating firedamp explosion occurred shortly before midnight on January 2, 1941. After the accident, work in the mine was stopped entirely. Jules Baumann, a charismatic administrator, took over the shaft after the war and for a while coal could be extracted again. At that time, horses were still used to pull the lorry's underground. This practice came to an end in 1960, at a time when the Saarland was undergoing the most significant upheaval in its history.

It would be an unspeakable loss to let the industrial culture, which was once the hard-earned income for many Saarland families, fall into disrepair. But there is still the civil engineer Kroth, who moved here from the Ruhr area and who has dedicated himself with skin and hair to the extensive redevelopment of the former territory of the Frankenholz mine. These are more than dreams that Kroth conveys; they are plans that only need to be implemented.

The planner and all his comrades-in-arms would welcome it if the state government in Saarbrücken would support the efforts to restore this property. Europe, the EU, too, will undoubtedly be interested in the eventful history of this building, because it was and is a piece of German-French history. 

Construction engineer Kroth has precise ideas and knows how to realize them. No one has any doubt about that,- he cultivates what has been forgotten since 1959.

Kroth is someone who tackles things, who wants to preserve what has remained of the pride of the Saarland mines and transfer it to modern times.

What is the outlook? How should the project be implemented?

Many concepts are conceivable; Bexbach has a mining museum. For example, the historically valuable compressor hall could be turned into a meeting place that also represents the concerns of the former occupying forces and the long-standing friendship between Germans and French. But Kroth has many other ideas that he would like to present. The building has two basements, which in its actual use had the advantage that supply shafts and pipes could be led under the surface. Now it could become a discotheque or a bowling alley. There has been a long tradition of bowling in Bexbach, which can look back on history in the so-called Bundesliga. 

A flexible event hall, which could also be used as an exhibition space, is one of the ideas that electrifies Kroth. Children can be left virtually downstairs, while the adults pursue their interests, the youngsters are looked after downstairs. An excellent concept that could be viable during this time. Regional gastronomy is also being considered. There is still a little time left before the starting signal is given. 

As Andreas Kroth emphasized in the interview, the intention is to create a homepage soon on which the concerns and ideas of the citizens are received. The website is to accompany the development of the entire area.  If you don't want to wait for the homepage, you are welcome to write to us; we will forward the mails: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.  or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.